370 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Mat 29, 1890. 



NEW ENGLAND FISHING. 



PROSPECTS are brightning concerning the Maine 

 fishing season. The weather has been very cold 

 thus far, and the sportsmen who went off early have suf- 

 fered from the elements, while the fishing has been 

 backward. But better news begins to come in. In the 

 first place, a run of salmon began at Bangor on Saturday. 

 A gentleman from Boston — I did not get his name— an 

 enthusiastic salmon angler, returned from that point on 

 Sunday. He had taken two salmon on the day previous, 

 making three for him this season, and he was very happy 

 over it. Mr. Mitchel, also of this city, was also having 

 good sport. In fact, some six salmon were taken there 

 on that day. A good run is expected there this week, 

 and Mr. Mitchel and Mr. Fred Ayer are on the ground. 



The trout fishermen are beginning to have good sport. 

 Moosehead waters and the waters of the upper Kennebec 

 are getting down to a more reasonable pitch, and the 

 records of trout will soon begin to pour in. Mr. E. H. 

 Clapp, a long-time fishermen at the Rangeleys, took a 

 5 ilbs. trout from Mooselucmagtxntic, last Tuesday, almost 

 the first trout of any size taken from that late this year. 

 A few days later, Mr. E. G. Rice, of Lawrence, Mass., 

 took a 71bs. trout at Bemis, followed by one of 61bs. and 

 several smaller ones. But the banner catch thus far this 

 season came out on Monday, and was on display in Ap- 

 pleton's window, on Washington street. It was a lO^lbs. 

 perfect brook trout, 271in. in length. It was a male fish 

 and wonderfully brilliant for a spring trout. It was 

 taken last week by Mr. G. W. M. Guild, of Boston. He, 

 with Mr. Walter H. Fox, of New York, and last, but by 

 no means least, the well-known sportsman Mr. Edgar W. 

 W. Curtis, of Meriden, Conn., have been stopping at the 

 Middle Dam, Richardson Lake, for a couple of weeks; they 

 were the first ones in to this lake. They had to wait three 

 days at Andover for the ice to go out of the lake. The house 

 at the Middle Dam was not open when they gotthere, but 

 with their guides they made themselves as comfortable as 

 possible, till the proprietor arrived, two days later. They 

 have had good fishing and excellent sport, with the ex- 

 ception that Mr. Curtis has been ill a part of the time 

 and not able to fish. But they have left him at the Mid- 

 dle Dam, and if there is any good fish in the lake, he is 

 sure to have them later. Mr. Guild is of the opinion 

 that he has taken the biggest trout on record from that 

 lake, but he will only need to look at the record, several 

 times published in the Forest and Stream — the record 

 of Sept. 29, 1879, to see an account of a trout weighing 

 1 If lbs., taken at the Upper Dam, by a Mr. Marble, of 

 Boston, which trout is now in the possession of the 

 Smithsonian Institution, at Washington. Again Colonel 

 Fitch, of Pueblo, Col., a guest of W. K. Moody, at Camp 

 Stewart, caught, last spring, a trout 27in. in length, but 

 the scales showed it to weigh only 91bs. 



The parties at the Maine lakes are numerous, and still 

 they go. Mr. J. O. Wetherbee, of Seaton, Mr. John 

 Simpkins, F. S. Moseley and the Hon. Wm. E. Russell 

 are. the guests of Mr. Bayard Thayer, the proprietor of 

 Birch Lodge, at the head of Richardson Lake. Report 

 says that they are having good sport. Mr. J. Parker 

 Whitney's family are at their beautiful cainp-i at Mos- 

 quito Brook. Mr. Whitney himself was delayed in Cali- 

 fornia longer than usual this year — he spends his winters 

 there and his summers at his camp. He is now in Boston, 

 but will soon join his family at the much-loved camps. 

 No more genial and thorough sportsman lives than Mr. 

 Whitney, and yet he finds no sport that pleases him 

 more than at the mouth of Mosquito Brook, on the spc t 

 Avhere he has camped nearly every season more or lefs 

 for 30 years. 



Hon. E. B. Stoddard goes to Lake Mooselucmaguntic 

 .this week. He goes to the home of the Oquossoc Angling 

 Association, of which party of anglers he is a member. 

 Senator W. P. Frye, of Maine, with Senator Chandler 

 and the Hon. Arthur Sewall, are at Senator Frye's camp 

 on Lake Mooselucmaguntic. Even the tariff bill has to 

 be dropped by honorable senators for a week at the dear 

 old camp. Hon. E. B. Haskell, one of the senior propri- 

 etors of the Boston Herald, is at the Oquossoc Associa- 

 tion camps, and at his own camps on the same lake, as 

 the case may be. E. A. Wheelock and party, from Put- 

 nam, Conn.", went in to Rangeley last week. Harry 

 Gardner, of the dry goods commission firm of Smith, 

 Hogg & Gardner, with F. C. McDuffee, of the Everett 

 Mills, Lawrence; Charless McDuffee, of the New Hamp- 

 shire Print Works, and Mr. W. M. Smith, of New York, 

 left for Rangeley Lake on Saturday. Mr. Gardner is a 

 sportsman of experience in those regions, but for a couple 

 of years business has kept him at home. 



Mr. R. Foster, of the firm of Foster & Weeks, with his 

 partner Mr. Weeks, Mrs. Weeks, Mrs. Foster and a 

 daughter of Mr. Foster, made a successful catch of tautog 

 last week. The party went down to Oak Bluffs, just 

 below Rocky Point on the Shore Line. They chartered a 

 boatman to take them out. "Such fishing," to use the 

 words of Mr. Foster, "I never dreamed of." It seems 

 that they caught more than they knew what to do with 

 in one afternoon, and they went again the next morning 

 with equally good luck. The ladies caught tautog weigh- 

 ing up to 501bs. The party was very much pleased with 

 the trip, the entertainment and the skill of the owner of 

 the craft. They were having fine sport on the second 

 day, but he warned them to "up lines," and they were 

 soon away and comfortably quartered an hour later at 

 the house of the boatman. Lucky that they were, for 

 within another hour the water was in commotion, the 

 beginning of the southwest storm of last week. On their 

 return they met a party of Boston fishermen going down 

 for tautog. They were housed two days by the storm 

 and not a fish. 



So they go afishing. The sport is excellent this year in 

 all quarters, except in some parts of New Hampshire, 

 where the fishing for fingerlings and the dastardly fish- 

 ing for count by summer boarders has depleted the 

 streams to the extent that nothing but fingerlings are 

 left. No trout can reach a greater age than two years, 

 or until his mouth gets large enough to cover the small- 

 est hook, before he is taken and exhibited as a trophy by 

 a summer boarder whose soul is smaller than the mouth 

 of the trout he has snatched. It is the neighborhood of 

 Bartlett, N. H., that I am speaking of. The shameful 

 fishing that i6 carried on in those beautiful mountain 

 streams, flowing from the wonders of the White Moun- 

 tains, is no new feature, but it arouses indignation every 

 time it is mentioned. Mr. 0. H. Smith, of Smith & 

 Blauchard, in the lumber trad e^here and present lessees 

 of the mills at Bartlett, with Mrs. Smith, tried the trout 



streams, several of them, in that vicinity the other day. 

 Mr. Smith is a good sportsman, and has a record 

 of a 6-pound trout at the Rangeleys; but on this 

 trip he did not get a trout that he had the face to show. 

 They were such little two-year-old fingerlings that he 

 threw them back again, and gave up pool after pool in 

 disgust. But on his return to the village he found a 

 record of 75 trout taken that day by another party, and 

 hardly one that was over six inches in length. He also 

 learned of a party a few day before having scoured the 

 streams in that vicinity, with a record of 700 trout, all of 

 them very small. Mr. Smith naturally asks if New 

 Hampshire has a law regarding the size of trout caught, 

 and if f o, where are the fish commissioners? 



The tackle trade is good and the sportsmen are happy. 

 "It costs like the mischief though!" was the remark of a 

 salmon fisherman at Litchfield's yesterdav. The lease of 

 a stream costs from $400 to $1,000, and Mr. Litchfield 

 mentions a salmon outfit sold costing over $900. 



Special. 



THE NEW HAMPSHIRE SEASON. 



COLEBROOK, N. H., May 17.— Fishing in this vicinity 

 is off, decidedly off, too; the "indications" of an 

 early season have failed to materialize. We have had 

 nothing in the shape of weather but cold rain storms 

 this month, and as a consequence streams are high, ponds 

 are high and hardly clear of ice, though the past few 

 days have pretty much done up the ice. 



A trip to Diamond Ponds Thursday, found mine host 

 Noyes on hand with one of his famous trout dinners. He 

 reports very few trout taken as y«t, one or two good 

 catches have been had from the small pond, but there 

 was still quite a quantity of floating ice on the large 

 pond, and fishing was out of the question. It will be 

 several days before good fishing will be had and the 

 fishermen there are impatiently waiting the good time 

 coming. We do not hear a sound from Connecticut lakes, 

 so conclude that the same condition of things prevails in 

 that quarter. 



Quite a number of fishermen have been here this week, 

 on the way to one or another of the resorts reached from 

 this place. Among the number I noticed Messrs. D. A. 

 Heald, of New York, and M.R. Emerson,'of Boston, who 

 with "Spoff" Flint, for guide, left here this morning for 

 their cosy little camp at the Greenough Ponds, in Errol; 

 and the Messrs. Farr, of Holyoke, Mass., in their annual 

 pilgrimage to Camp Diamond ; while one or two parties 

 have gone through the Notch to the Magalloway and 

 Rangeleys. 



I understand that Mr. Walter bikers, of Errol, has 

 opened a sportsman's camp at the Greenough Ponds. I 

 have often wondered why some one did not open such 

 accommodations there, as there is excellent trout fishing 

 during the earlier part of the season. 



Colebrook, N. H,, May 24.— Fishing in the Diamond 

 Ponds has begun in good earnest. Parties from there 

 yesterday and to-day report excellent sport, and every 

 one is correspondingly happy. Landlord Noyes's accom- 

 modations were taxed to their utmost last night, and to- 

 day a party of ten from Manchester, N. H., and vicinity 

 left here for the Ponds. They will be well cared for, 

 however, as "Mart" can always find room for "one more." 

 The fish in these ponds are not large, running from 

 ilbs. to 3Jlbs. Most of them were taken with bait, but 

 yesterday afternoon and evening a few good ones were 

 taken with the fly. In a week, with favorable weather, 

 fly-fishing will be good. Up to yesterday very few fish 

 have been taken at Second Connecticut Lake, but doubt- 

 less the same favorable weather has brought about the 

 desired results there as well. Uncle Tom has quite a 

 family of anglers there waiting the first run. Fred Flint 

 from Wilson's Mills, Me., is in town and reports the logs 

 nearly out of the Magalloway, and that the river will be 

 clear of them above Azescohos I alls by the middle of 

 next week, and probably in two weeks more the steamer 

 will be able to resume its regular summer trips from 

 Errol to the "Brown Farm." It is usually about a week 

 or ten days after the river is cleared of Togs before good 

 fishing is to be had . Rob. 



CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 



CHICAGO, 111., May 9 —The austerity of the season 

 shows some signs' of mitigation, and there is a prob- 

 ability that during the week there will be some fishing 

 done and some fish caught. Indeed, the season for the 

 Fox Lake district is already open, and baskets of bass 

 are beginning to come down. Of these none worth men- 

 tion come to mind, except that reported by Mr. J. M. 

 Clark, of 20 bass taken in one day at Crystal Lake, total 

 weight 451bs. By June 1 the fishing in the lower Wis- 

 consin lakes should be good. 



I saw a letter to-day from the M. & R. station agent at 

 Republic, Wis. He says thr.t as he was writing (May 17) a 

 heavy snowstorm was raging. Up to this time the 

 streams had all been high and cold, with no fish taken 

 on several trips by residents of the region. He counsels 

 holding off till after the first of June at least. 



Some days ago I asked Mr. J. F. Lee, agent of the 

 Canadian Pacific at Chicago, something about the coun- 

 try above Duluth and northeast of Vermilion Lake. Mr. 

 Lee wrote to Mr. Robt. Kerr, general passenger agent of 

 the C. P. R. at Winnipeg, and to-day received his reply 

 as follows: 



"Yours of 30th April relative to fishing ground in 

 western Ontario. Please Sf a the inclosed from Mr. Tel- 

 ford, who is a genuine sportsman, regarding this fishing 

 ground. Guides can be readily got at Rat Portage, etc., 

 and camping outfits can be purchased in Winnipeg at 

 reasonable prices." 



Mr. Telford's letter, written from the Treasurer's Office 

 of the C. P. Ry. , at Winnipeg, is below: 



"Relative to attached inquiry, Lake of the Woods 

 abounds with lake trout, black bass, whitefish and other 

 less valuable varieties. Rainy River the same, but up 

 the river clearer water and finer fish. Vermillion Bay 

 much the same as the Lake of the Woods, while Summit 

 Lake, Lake Barclay and Clear Lake have what we know 

 as 'landlocked salmon trout,' very fine fish, and all the 

 other varieties besides. No speckled trout west of Fort 

 William till you get to the Saskatchewan River. 1 ' 

 - There is a refreshing railroad brevity about this, but it 

 seems likely there is some fishing up there, although I did 

 not learn what I wanted at all. There is some country 

 up there off the old Hudson Bay water trail which is cer- 

 tainly better than these well known waters. Readers 

 may note the "landlocked salmon trout" item, however. 



A year or two ago I made mention of this fish as being 

 found in Burntside Lake, near Ely. That is in the same 

 region practically. I wonder if this is the same fi3h as 

 the "landlocked salmon" found in Trout Lake, Wisconsin, 

 which only bites in the early spring? 



I believe I mentioned that my friend Mr. Harry man 

 and myself were about to finish the explorations of the 

 mystic Salt Creek begun by Mr. Loyd and myself late 

 last fall. There is always a pleasure in hunting out a 

 new stream which nobody knows anything about, and 

 here was ga stream right near Chicago ; le jnt which 

 diligent inquiry could develop no information at all. 

 Mr. Loyd and 1 had thrust ourselves late one night upon 

 the hospitality of a delightful old couple of Swedish 

 folks whose pretty little farm lies back in the hills from 

 the Little Calumet. The old farmer told us there were 

 bass in Salt Creek, and the stream looked like it. We 

 remembered that he spoke of Chesterton as being a few 

 miles distant from his farm, but we neglected to learn 

 whether there was a station nearer, and we did not have 

 any idea how to find the farm from Chesterton: but we 

 thought we would just take a lay out in the country and 

 try to find those very pleasant old people, and go fishing 

 in the creek above tbeir farm. Accordingly we bought 

 tickets to Chesterton, which is just forty miles southeast 

 of Chicago, and on the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, 

 instead of the B. & O., as we had supposed. 



I had never been down in that country over the Lake 

 Shore road before, and it all looked strange to me, al- 

 though I was vaguely conscious that we were probably 

 getting a good way further down than Mr. Swanson's 

 ffci-m. At length we asked a farmer boy on the train 

 which way it was to the junction of Salt Creek and the 

 Little Calumet, and he told us we were past it. We 

 asked him if there were fish in Salt Creek, and he said 

 there were plenty of them. We asked him if there were 

 bass, and he said there were bass there half as long as his 

 arm, especially at the mill dam at Gossburg. That was 

 about seven or eight or ten miles from Chesterton, but if 

 we would get off at the next station, Porter, we would 

 save a mile or so. He could not give us definite direc- 

 tions as to the road - suggested a livery rig; said if we 

 were not afraid to walk we could go four miles west 

 down the Michigan Central track, which crossed the 

 Lake Shore at Porter, and could then probably get lodg- 

 ing near the creek at a farmhouse, Tne Little Calumet 

 would then be to our right, and the Gossburg dam on 

 Salt Creek would be three or four miles above us. He 

 said that the fishing was always pretty good there, and 

 once more insisted as to the length of the bass. It would 

 have been closer to take the Central to Crisman, he 

 thought, or the B. & O. to McCool's Station. We had 

 come about the longest way around we could, and would 

 have to walk turkey if we got to Gossburg that night. 



But that did not bother us any. We had all the world 

 before us. and cared nothing where night overtook us. 

 We didn't know where Salt Creek was, and didn't care 

 very much. It was enough to look at the rich green of 

 the fields, or to inhale the rich odors from the flowering 

 trees. We shouldered our little packs and trudged off 

 along the Central tracks very contentedly with the sun 

 an hour high. We had concluded to give up the visit to 

 the Swanson fai m and go to the dam higher up the creek, 

 where we thought the fishing would be better. 



We asked two or three passers by about the road to 

 Gossburg, but some of them had never heard of the place 

 and did not know what we meant until we mentioned 

 the mill-dam on Salt Creek. At length we got headed 

 right, left the railway tracks and struck across the 

 country along a straight and very pretty road. We went 

 at a good gait, and our seven miles' walk was done before 

 we thought of it, and we found ourselves by the side of 

 a very pretty little stream in a pretty little grove and 

 could see the clam and white water below it. We went 

 up to the nearest house — there were only three in the 

 whole set.lement — and were directed to Mr, Henry 

 Trowe, who kept the creamery on the hill just above the 

 mill-dam. 



"Creamery?" exclaimed my friend. "Did 1 hear cream? 

 Cream — milk — butter — come on I" 



We came on, and finally argued Mr. Trowe into a con- 

 sent to keep us over night. Mr. Trowe keeps a little store 

 beside the creamery, and also keeps the post-office, which 

 is about as big as a hat-box. It seems that this post-office 

 is now called Salt Creek instead of Gossburg. All in all, 

 here was a delightfully quiet and beautiful country 

 corner, and we blessed our lucky stars since starting out 

 for no one knew where, we were now arrived at so pleas- 

 ant and happy a place as this. When Mr. Trowe's good- 

 looking helpmate had called us to supper, and we had 

 eaten three or four dozen eggs and a ham and a few 1 

 pounds of gold-fine butter, we looked at each other 

 in silent bliss, and arose as one man to go out and dig 

 angle worms, for the voice of the water was calling from 

 below the hill, and neither of us had wet a line this year, 



Alas, when we went down to the stream to try for a 

 little of the fishing that couldn't wait till morning, we 

 found t*ie gates of the dam raised and all the stream 

 below a boiling flood. There was a leak in the dam t 

 be repaired and the water had to be drawn off. We wer 

 disconsolate, but took heart of grace when they told 

 that the gates would be closed in the morning and tha 

 the fishing would then be better than if they had nol 

 been opened. 



This we found to be the case. All night long the roar,; 

 of the waters sounded in our ears. Once we heard 

 raining in the night and groaned exceedingly; but our 

 luck staid with us, and in the morning it was warm and 

 clear. Long before breakfast we were on the banks 

 the pool we had selected, and we actually had a bite oi 

 two and caught the first fish of the season, a small b 

 healthy sunfish. After breakfast we went seriously 

 work, and although the gates were not closed we caugh 

 a great many croppies, rock bass and sunfish of severa 

 varieties As we used light trout tackle, we had good 

 sport catching these little fellows. I never could see, 

 much difference in fish, anyhow. I would about as soonJ 

 catch a sunfish as a bass, and I would rather catch the 1 

 former on light tackle than the latter on heavy gear] 

 We used one bright fly, Professor or Ferguson, abovd 

 the baited hook, and every croppy we caught bit on tin] 

 fly. Harryman caught the most fish, including three oi 

 four suckers, which took worms in their'n. He capped 

 the climax by catching 9ix kinds of perch and sunfish. s] 

 lot of bull.jeads and a clam (mussel). The latter bit oij 

 his hook fair and square, and made a pretty good fight] 

 It did not take the fly. They hardly ever do. 



